RTE Roundtable Talk #4: What is Russia?

Featuring Tessa Lena and Riley Waggaman

"It was the most existentially meandering podcast…very very Russian. Very appropriate." -Tessa Lena

I'm a little late getting yesterday's Roundtable Talk out. I've been recovering from a back injury, and thankfully the pain has subsided faster than I would have expected. But I'm still staying away from long sits at the desk, spending more time stretching and being basically mobile.

Tessa (a Russian living in the U.S.) and Riley (an American recently living in Russia) are two brilliant people with enjoyable substacks and interviews. I'll go ahead and recommend Tessa's chats with Johnny Vedmore (here and here) which I greatly enjoyed. Tessa's is the first substack I started reading, and I now check Riley's once a week or so both as an update on what's going on in Russia and for the laughs.

Since a sort of second Cold War has emerged in the recent chaos, I thought a simple question like, "What is Russia?" might serve Western audiences well. It's not a question to answer in a 90 minute discussion, and if our talk provokes more questions than feelings of answers, then good.

You can watch our discussion on Rumble, here:

Also, here we are on YouTube where our first few podcasts somehow passed the censors (so far):

You can watch us live on Tuesdays at 1 PM Eastern. The RTE podcast is on numerous platforms including Rumble, YouTube, Bitchute, Odyssey, Stitcher, Spotify, Apple, and some other places that Liam knows better about than I do. Written transcripts will be available for paid subscribers. We thank all of our supporters and hope that you get something excellent out of each discussion.